Friday, June 3, 2016

All the Wrong Answers

I have a bone to pick with the folks at apartments.com.  Their latest commercial actually had me yelling at the TV the other day with its sheer stupidity and ignorance.  If you haven't seen it, it features Jeff Goldblum as the host of a game show pitting renters--who appear to be of Millennial age--against an older looking group of homeowners:



Obviously I wouldn't expect apartments.com to try and sell houses, but way to appeal to the least financially literate generation of all time.  The only thing missing from the long-winded answer provided by that one renter with garbage about "like-mindedness" and "societal fragmentation" is "conveniently located on a street car line!" 

Two of the three answers provided by the "owners" happen only to people who do not know how to manage their money.  Those who do know that actually keeping track of your spending and making a monthly budget will keep you out of "crushing debt" and "foreclosure".  It's doubtful that the entire generation embodied by the "renter team" understands anything about "equity"--since they probably grew up in a house that was purchased with a "no money down, 100% financed, adjustable rate" mortgage when anyone who could show up in a bank or a lender's office was guaranteed to get a loan (thanks in large part to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd).  And let me tell you it is the best feeling in the world when you don't have any mortgage payments at all--and you know there is nothing that could force you out of your home.

Let's not forget about privacy--unless you like sharing your underwear with everyone else in your building at the communal laundry facility.  And we are just far enough away from our neighbors to blast The Beatles during Saturday morning chores and not garner any banging on the wall and shouts to turn it down.  Plus, there is the security of knowing that there isn't some pot head that left his candles burning too close to the curtains--leading to a fire that destroys everything that you owned (and likely didn't have insured).

I'm guessing that the apartments.com ad is actually going to be a big hit with its target audience of Millennials.  They are the generation that has been told to accept less in life--so the government can have more.


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